Motor vehicle illumination device

A motor vehicle lighting device comprising at least one branch of semiconductor light sources including two or more light source units connected in series is disclosed herein. A MOSFET switch bridging the individual light source units is assigned to the light source units. The at least one branch is fed from the output voltage of a DC/DC converter with respect to ground. An activation circuit is assigned to the MOSFET switch for activating the MOSFET switch, which is a p-channel MOSFET. A rectifier circuit is assigned to the DC/DC converter. The input of the rectifier circuit is connected to a pole of a storage inductor of the converter, at which negative voltage pulses occur with respect to ground. The rectifier circuit is designed to rectify the negative pulses and to provide the resulting negative DC voltage of the activation circuit for switching the MOSFET switch.